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213. We cannot and need not go as far as the majority had gone in Bank Mellat [Bank Mellat v. Her Majesty's Treasury (No. 2), 2014 AC 700 : (2013) 3 WLR 179 : 2013 UKSC 39] . UK has a statute where standards of procedure for judicial review are set out and the majority decision was on the application of those standards. But even by our own standards, we are obliged to see if there were less intrusive measures available and whether RBI has at least considered these alternatives. On the question of availability of alternatives, the July 2018 Report of the European Union Parliament (titled "Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain") is relied upon by Shri Ashim Sood. The relevant portion (in Para 5.4) reads as follows:
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NC: 2024:KHC-D:6912 WP No. 107496 of 2023 and Connected matters "In this respect we also note that some cryptocurrencies that are now on the market, such as Dash and Monero, are fully anonymous, whereas others, such as Bitcoin and the like are pseudo-anonymous, basically meaning that if great effort is made and complex techniques are deployed, it is possible for authorities to find out users' identities. These fully anonymous cryptocurrencies are designed to stay in the dark and outside of the scope of authorities. After AMLD5 (Fifth Anti- Money Laundering Directive of the European Union) this will no longer be possible to the fullest extent : the cryptocurrency users that want to convert their cryptocurrency into fiat currency via a virtual currency exchange or hold their portfolio via a custodian wallet provider, will be subject to customer due diligence. But, as aforementioned, there is still a whole world outside of these new obliged entities under AMLD5. It goes without saying that this may sound particularly interesting for criminals seeking for new ways to launder money, finance terrorists or evade taxes. If a legislator does not want to outright ban these cryptocurrencies -- and for not imposing such a ban a good argument is that cash is also fully anonymous and lawful -- the only way to find out who uses them is to require users to register mandatorily. For reasons of proportionality it could then be considered to make the registration subject to a materiality threshold."